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Sinapis arvensis
Photo: Hamza Khan / Alamy Stock / mauritius images
I belong to a family where it's common to yell at plants;
At least that's what my fellow gardener calls it.
What he means is this: We go for a walk with my sisters in spring, something is blooming and we are greeted joyfully and loudly.
Very loud, my fellow gardener thinks.
When it gets quieter again and you ask yourself and the others what that pink and white thing is, the answer is guaranteed to come: »a
Prunu
s«.
Which is actually always true.
Sloe, plum, almond, apricot, cherry, almost everything belongs to this genus, almost everything is
Prunus
that has flowers these days.
A single word and you're right.
Latin can be useful.
That's how I think today.
It wasn't like that before.
We used to sit in Miss P.'s classroom and read Gaius Julius Caesar,
De bello gallico,
Tales from the Gallic Wars.
We learned
loric
a, the belt armor,
castra collocare
, to set up camp
, itaque
, that's why.
Why we learned it was not clear, we would never need the words, we thought, the language seemed as yesterday as the armor that Roman legionnaires wore around their bodies.
Later, a lively Latin trainee came and tried Terence's love comedies, one was called
Heautontimoroumeno
s and almost managed to make the Latin interesting, but only almost.
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Latin was dead.
Now I realize it's alive.
Now, in the garden.
It is often said that structured thinking is acquired by learning Latin, and since I took it as a school subject, of course I say the same.
But my Latin was so weak for decades that I didn't even manage to translate the inscription on Hamburg City Hall.
The bit of Latin that was needed was written in the Asterix: Hail
, Caesar
, greetings.
Errare humanum est
, to err is human.
Alea iacta est
, the die is cast.
Crassus, I remember!
That's what fat Romans were called
Quercus
, the oak.
Their branches grow sideways, that's how you notice it, I know that from my mother, who used to study agriculture and therefore also Latin.
Otherwise I didn't really listen to her vocabulary, but now some things come back.
Ilex
, the holly,
Allium
, the leek.
It starts insidiously, at first you find it silly, what committed gardeners announce: If you say it in Latin, everyone in the world knows exactly what you mean.
I rarely deal with Guatemalan or Uzbek garden enthusiasts, I don't need that, I thought, but little by little gardening words evoked a distant echo from school days.
Grandiflorus
, large-flowered.
Sempervirens
, evergreen.
I've now bought Lorraine Harrison's Latin for Gardeners, a nice book but more lexical than structured.
At least I started revising vocabulary.
Learn vocabulary.
It's that far.
Repens
means creeping,
columnaris
means: growth in height.
Asperifolius:
raptor-leaved.
The
prefix
atro-:
dark.
Cruciatus:
cruciform.
Crassus:
thick, fleshy.
Crassus, I remember!
That's what fat Romans were called!
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Katharina Stegelmann, Barbara Supp
The Worm Inside: An Honest Book About Gardening
Publisher: SPIEGEL book by Ullstein
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: SPIEGEL book by Ullstein
Number of pages: 272
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I come from the plant howler family, the Prunus from the
Rosaceae family
, the rose family.
I had no idea that all of this was closely related:
Prunus spinosa,
the sloe.
It's spreading among us and thriving great, too great.
Prunus triloba,
the almond tree, not for us on the Swabian Alb.
Prunus persica,
the peach - forget it.
But
Prunus domestica,
the normal house plum, likes our harsh climate.
Prunus avium
lives with us and bears fruit and it looks like the birds know the botanical name.
wild cherry.
That's how they go about it.
I had already thought
about taking the airgun (Latin:
telum, well not exactly, but something like that, because the Romans weren't that advanced with firearms) left by my mother-in-law and drive
Turdus merula
(the blackbird) away by force of arms , but I can't bring myself to do it.
Dona nobis pacem
.
We talk about the plants, the animals, the words, the fellow gardener and I, and I find I don't want to push it too far.
Our language level has improved quite a bit in the six years that we have had the garden.
Plants aren't often called "that there" anymore.
It may well be that the word field mustard is mentioned,
but we're not really talking about
Sinapis arvensis .
The main thing is that we mean the same thing:
That yellow one.
